Interview with the Managing Director also Founder of TOP AFRICA NEWS on the future of this Media House

This is an interview organized by the Management of Africa News Digest Ltd with the aim of communicating the vision of TOPAFRICANEWS.COM, a media company operating in Rwanda but which has already been able to reach a big number of audience both on the African continent and abroad.

On behalf of Africa News Digest Ltd, a company that manages the daily functions of TOPAFRICANEWS Website and other operation, Mr. Kayiranga Justin, one of the Journalists working with TOPAFRICANEWS spoke to Mr. DUSABEMUNGU Ange de la Victoire, founder of Topafricanews.com and here are excerpts of the Interview

Who is Mr. DUSABEMUNGU Ange de la Victoire?

I am a Professional Journalist and I am a Rwandan who loves his country and his Continent, Africa. I have been working in the field of Information and Communication for about nine years but in particular I worked with companies or organizations that are also growing to help them achieve their goals especially through Media and Communication.

Based on your experience, what have you found that someone who has not worked in the Media Industry cannot know?

What I have already seen is too much. Working in the media is a profession like any other profession. To become a media professional, you must be someone who has an open mind and knows what you want to achieve.

From what I have seen, many people think that someone wakes up in the morning and immediately becomes a journalist. This is not the case. Because a journalist is trained and is helped to get into the media Industry by his/her predecessors and then he can take steps to be able to combine what he has learned in the School with what he/she sees on the ground and choose the best way to do his/her profession.

What I also found is that journalists working in the same society work as a community with different perspectives. When I say ‘different’, to some people this may seem like a designation of something else, but it’s really not. In fact, not everyone has the same perspectives on the same issues. So journalists have not the same feelings, but what is important is that their representatives should be able to manage the various views and always check if their dissimilarity is not leading to the violation of professionalism or violates the rights of the public as they are the ones who are targeted with the information disseminated by the media. So this is where the ethics are applied. Truly none should wake up and immediately feel like a journalist. It requires knowledge, understanding, mental and emotional development and a sense of the role a journalist should play in the protection of the society in which he or she works.

3. What moves you to create TOP AFRICA NEWS website and tells about the Origin of its Name?

In fact the reason I started TOPAFRICANEWS.COM is because of the knowledge and understanding of what I needed to bring in as a New. Over the years I have worked for others and my priority was always not prioritizing Salary. Instead I wanted to have knowledge and to expand my mind. When you sit on a school bench and meet teachers with a broad mind you also expand. When you look at the teachers who have given me the knowledge, among them you find that there is a level of expanded mind that they wanted us, students to have. So that’s where it starts. The sense of that psychological thinking gives you a picture of why you’re learning. When you love a teacher, once you finish school you keep in mind what he has taught you. The life tips a teacher or an instructor gives the students are what take them to the outside world to find solutions.

Concerning the Origin of the Name “TOP AFRICA NEWS”, at first I thought about naming it Rwanda News, but then I talked to a friend of mine and he told me that Rwanda News would put the limit on people’s perspectives about your coverage. He told me why can’t you name it TOP AFRICA NEWS? This is where the name came from, and we immediately rushed to legalize the Media through the Rwanda Media Self-Regulatory Commission (RMC) and the Rwanda Development Board (RDB) where we registered as a business but in particular a publishing Company known as AFRICA NEWS DIGEST Ltd.

Another thing I remember is that when I was registering in RDB one of the company registrars asked his colleague, are there any companies with Names including Africa here in Rwanda? Another immediately replied, “Yes, we register companies with Africa Names, no problem.” That is how the company was founded and registered.

4. What do you think you have done within these past three years?

It really wasn’t that hard for me and my Team to work together, to start a professional career and to give a special opportunity to people to express their views and communicate about their businesses through our Media. We have helped many organizations to grow their brands and most of them free of charge. Many people have been able to raise their voices through our Media channel. We supported a lot of advocacy campaigns that turned into success. Throughout the past three years, we continued to go through various changes in terms of performance in order to better help people understand what we want to achieve over time.

In the past three years, people from other continents have also requested us to publicize their call to action messages and promise to help us in promoting our Media. So again, this means that if we had not engaged in similar partnerships we would have had to spend a lot of money on the marketing of our brand. You see, we have no financial resources to use, and that partnerships helped us build confidence in our readers and we hope for a better future.

5. Speaking of finances, one might wonder where you get the money to make things work.

As I told you, we are at the level now of starting to generate income so we can be able to run this mature media. I begin by telling you that with the will the ability is there. There is really no financial means we have gained but when you look at the brand we have, you might think there is a lot of investment we put in. Can I say that we survive on benevolent or charities? Hahahaha Not at all. But it is like someone approaches a brother and says to him, ‘I want to achieve this,’ and then the brother says, ‘How can I help you?’ When you explain it well, he helps positively. With such strategies and others mentioned above, we have built the foundation of the Media both in the Management of the website and the visibility.

Here I commend those who help us in our daily work but also thank the team that has a strong hope for a better future. Today may not be the day but tomorrow will be the day. So Business grows on a daily basis.

6. What are you planning for the future?

 We will continue to expand the professionalism and add new skills in reporting and writing attractive content while at the same time continue to strengthen the reasons for the Establishment of the Media. Another goal is to open Doors to anyone who wants to work with us but who does not intend to jeopardize the peace and wellbeing of the people we serve. We want someone who wants us to move from one level to another. That is what we want. In addition, we intend to launch a News Magazine that focuses on the environment, agriculture and health. This is where our focus is and we hope that also the post COVID 19 society will have to look at those three sectors.

For any support use the following address:

Email: info@topafricanews.com or Tel: +250787105131

I would also like to thank those who helped us during the last three years through any business deal that passed through our website and those who continue to give us advice to achieve our goal.

Media Contact:

Ange de la Victoire DUSABEMUNGU

Company Founder

Tel: +250 78 71 05 131

KIGALI-Rwanda

Or Personal Email: vickange@gmail.com

About TOPAFRICANEWS:

TOPAFRICANEWS.com is a Private shareholder Digital News Website managed by AFRICA NEWS DIGEST Ltd, a Domestic Company registered in Rwanda Development Board.

Available on www.TOPAFRICANEWS.com, this website publishes stories from across Africa focusing on Environment, Natural resources, Livestock and Agriculture, Tourism and conservation, Youth, Sports and Culture, Peace Building, Health, Infrastructure and ICT, Security, Education, Business and Banking. The main objective of this website is to tell the World the real Africa’s Story from real and reliable sources. We Publish News Stories, Supplements stories, advertorials, Feature stories among many others.